The stars flickered like dying embers as the ship Wanderlight broke through the dusky curtain of Elun’Thar’s upper atmosphere. The planet loomed beneath them—vast, scarred, and glimmering faintly with the ghostlight of ancient structures long buried by time and dust. Kael Drenwick stood at the helm, one hand gripping the worn throttle, the other resting on the hilt of his plasma pistol.

“Coming in hot,” Miv croaked from behind a wall of holographic readouts. The alien engineer’s four hands danced across the controls, stabilizing their entry vector. “We’re three minutes from touch. Ground teams are already scrambling.”

Below them, Elun’Thar’s surface glowed with activity. Makeshift landing pads flickered to life. Floodlights arced across sand-blasted plateaus. Salvagers, scholars, and scavengers raced to prepare for the Wanderlight’s descent. It wasn’t every day that a ship bearing relics from the Black Rings of N’vesh, or memory shards from the shattered moons of Valkaar, came to port.

Kael’s crew had been gone nearly a full cycle. Long enough for their reputation to grow like smoke on solar winds. Whispers had already reached Elun’Thar’s deep diggers: the Wanderlight had raided a vault thought sealed by galactic law, unearthed runes from planets no longer in starmaps, and captured items that shouldn’t exist.

Inside the hold, crates were strapped down with magnetic locks, humming with residual energy. Some bore warnings in languages that hadn’t been spoken in millennia. Others pulsed with low frequencies that made teeth ache and circuits stutter. Vaelaris Nox stood silently among them, fingers gliding along one obsidian artifact as though listening to a melody no one else could hear.

Kael glanced at him through the reflection on the control panel. “Anything about this place feel… off to you?”

Vaelaris didn’t answer right away. His pale eyes remained fixed on the artifact. “Elun’Thar is not a dead world. It dreams. Loudly.”

Kael grunted. He wasn’t the type for omens or mysticism, but he’d seen what Vaelaris could do—and more terrifyingly, what he knew. “Great. A dreaming planet. Just what we need.”

The ship groaned as landing gear deployed, skimming the edge of a weather-beaten platform where a haphazard crew of port guards, traders, and relic inspectors were gathering. Some had data pads clutched tight. Others carried plasma rifles. All looked up as the Wanderlight descended—sleek, dark, its hull lined with fresh scorch marks and symbols that had no place in modern navigation.

A hiss of steam rose as the gangway extended.

Kael stepped out first, long coat flaring behind him in the wind. Miv was next, hauling a reinforced crate larger than himself. Vaelaris emerged last, gliding silently in his strange, layered garments, the chained ornaments on his ears and throat catching light like fragments of lost constellations.

A senior relic officer approached them, flanked by drones scanning the ship’s signatures. “Kael Drenwick. We weren’t sure if the rumors were true.”

Kael smirked. “They rarely are. That’s what makes them valuable.”

Behind him, the crew began unloading. Polished fragments of an artificial moon. A stasis-locked crown once worn by a god-king. A broken idol still weeping liquid crystal. As each item emerged, the crowd swelled, murmuring with awe, fear, and raw hunger.